Will the last millionaire to leave Britain please turn out the light?
More millionaires are leaving Britain than any other country in the world, taking with them investment, jobs and insights. And our loss is the rest of the world’s gain, says James Price
Britain is due to suffer the biggest flight of millionaires out of any country in the world over the course of this next parliament. With them, they will take their ingenuity and the sweat of their brows, along with their investments, their disposable cash and their goodwill towards Britain.
The numbers are terrifying. A new report from the Adam Smith Institute predicts that the share of the population who are millionaires will fall by a staggering 20 per cent by 2028, much worse than the rest of the world, who will see their numbers increasing.
The share of the population who are millionaires will fall by a staggering 20 per cent by 2028
And Britain’s loss in terms of wealth, investment, job-creation and insight is other countries’ gain. In the last three years the UAE has welcomed 15,000 more liquid millionaires – almost the exact same number that have left the UK.
And anecdotally, I have heard from three friends in the past week who are upping sticks and moving to the UAE, where they will be paid much better and taxed much less.
The doom for both Labour and Britain doesn’t end there. Labour’s plans to add tax onto independent schools (including, worst of all, those for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) is also already having damaging effects on both children and the school system, especially the state schools that don’t have the places for pupils who are forced to leave the private sector.
An exodus of talent
So the result of Labour’s headline policies for the upcoming Budget is an exodus of capital, talent and even children. It is no wonder that the Treasury is having to cast doubt on their own sums just weeks before Rachel Reeves is due to deliver it.
The tragedy of all of this is how avoidable it is. Britain is already struggling under the highest tax burden since the Second World War, with crumbling public services to show for it. No one sane can suggest we haven’t tried to tax and borrow our way to prosperity over the past 20 years. Everywhere Labour turns to try to squeeze the pips further, they face more challenges (even their despicable pension raid is being abandoned after realising it will affect the very public sector workers they have given a bung to at the behest of their union paymasters).
Instead of trying so hard, they could do the exact opposite; cast aside the punitive taxes and stultifying regulations that are holding this country back. There is so much still going for Britain that if Labour got out of the way, ripped down the barriers to investment and growth that they are throwing up, they could preside over the greatest economic recovery in 40 years.
Think tank land, and doubtless the millionaires fleeing for a better life, will have the technical answers to improve things, including how to make a tax regime that attracts capital, both human and otherwise. But the problem is that this Government just doesn’t know what it is for, and is thus far unwilling to accept how much worse they are making things. We can’t afford 40 years in the wilderness whilst they work it out.
In the book of Exodus, God warns Moses about “a darkness which may even be felt”. When the last wealth creator leaves, and turns the light out, we will feel that darkness very heavily, indeed.
James Price is a former government advisor